I Hate Everything About You

That's the title of a song by Three Days Grace, a Canadian band of the I'm-an-angst-filled-twenty- something- from- a- middle- class- family genre, epitomized by Nickelback, and which I can't abide. What follows in the refrain is "Why do I love you?"

This song perfectly expresses how I feel about Facebook.

(Ha! Gotcha! You thought I was going to say Jack, didn't you?)

I may hate it — heck, I do hate it — but that's not stopping me from being obsessed with it. And I do mean obsessed. Last night I hung out on Nadine's fabulous patio with Nadine and Monica, drinking beer until 2:00 in the morning, and refused, even through my drunken haze, to answer their questions about Jack, except for to say, "Do you remember what Hilary Clinton said, when she was on her book tour a few years ago, when all the talk show hosts would ask her why she stayed with Bill?"

"What?"

"He's far from perfect, and yes, he's hurt me, but for all his faults, he's still the most interesting, intelligent man I know, and I'd rather spend time with him than with any other man I've ever met."

When I got home I logged on and saw that three more people had added themselves to my Facebook friend list. I'd broken the 30 mark on my first day!

Top Ten Things I Hate About Facebook:

1. It forces you to enter your year of birth.
2. It encourages you to enter years for everything else, so that people can do the math.
3. The word "random," used incorrectly, appears as an option for almost every indicator.
4. It wants you to indicate your political and religious views.
5. It doesn't offer "random" as an option for your political and religious views.
6. People whose profile photo is not of them alone.
7. The childish third-party apps, like Boozemail.
8. Student/teacher is not an option for indicating your relationship with a new friend.
9. The Americanness of it: It views "college" as not being an institution one gets a degree from.
10. Poking. It's just idiotic.

Number One Thing I Love About Facebook:

1. It gives as an option, under relationship status, "It's complicated."

My bloggerly friend, Neil Kramer, also lists his relationship status as "it's complicated." If you're not familiar with Neil's blog, he's an L.A. writer who lives with his estranged wife, Sophia, whom he absolutely adores. We're unsure how she feels about him. They're not divorced, they're just separated, but they live together. See? And you thought my relationship with Jack was barmy.

My friend Genie, whom I've known since grade three, is on Facebook. She emailed me a few weeks back to ask, "Do you remember a boy named Clifford Jerel, from Miss Parker's grade three class at Jacob Beam?"

"Um, yeah! I thought you said you read back to the beginning of my stories? Didn't you notice that I mentioned him? Real name and all, figuring, what the heck, it's not like he'll ever... see it... waitasec... NO!!"

"Yes!"

"No way!"

"Way!"

Thank you, Facebook. I can't wait until I hear from Roger Larmon.

In the next story, Sass eats chicken soup and watches All My Children.